


Quarrel with a Boot

by websandwhiskers



Series: The Proper Care and Feeding of Indefinable Things [15]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mortality, break-up, discussion of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:37:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/websandwhiskers/pseuds/websandwhiskers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has a birthday party - Steve, Natasha, and loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quarrel with a Boot

**Author's Note:**

> . . . okay, so I'm going there. Probably not going to adhere strictly to the the headcanon I posted over on Tumblr, but I'm taking this story farther into the future than I thought I would. This story relies heavily on my own theories / own canon of how the super-soldier serum and similar derivatives work, primarily the idea that Natasha, Steve, and Bruce are all aging at a similarly much-decreased rate. 
> 
> There's no character death here, but there's discussion of some characters' normal human lifespans, and other characters lack thereof, and of loss you know is coming. This story is . . hopefully tender and meaningful with the team bonding, rather than just morose and depressing, but it definitely IS morose and depressing.
> 
> Also I broke up a pairing I put together; maybe I should just entitle this "You're all going to hate me!" and be done with it.
> 
> I promise good things in Steve's future. Really. Swear. 
> 
> (The title, of course, is quoting Loki.)

Natasha finds Steve in the hallway behind the kitchen, close enough to the ballroom that the party can still be heard – but then, the party can probably still be heard a few blocks off – but far enough out of the way that it would require some effort on Tony’s part to find him.  Tony’s too drunk, literally and on his own spectacle, to make that sort of effort at the moment. 

 Steve is leaning against the wall, head tilted back, eyes closed.  She has no doubt whatsoever that he hears her approaching, and furthermore knows it’s her, so she takes his lack of a reaction as an invitation to share his company.  She props up the space of wall next to him.  She watches the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.

 “Not your sort of party?” she asks lightly, and he chuckles.

 “No, no not really,” he allows.

 “Me either,” she agrees, and waits, a few inches between their shoulders.  She’d feel bad for abandoning Bruce – who actually, really _doesn’t_ like this sort of party – but he’ll understand.  He’d be even worse at this than he is at the party.  This – people – is her thing. 

 “I should go back,” Steve says.  “They’re going to notice I’m gone, and Tony’ll get upset, and it’s his birthday.”

 “Probably,” Natasha agrees.

 “He’s enjoying himself,” Steve observes.  “He loves this.”

 “He does.”  Steve’s eyes are open, now, but they’re making a study of the ceiling. 

 “I’m not . . . I’m not _heartbroken_ , you know,” Steve says, with rather too much scorn in his tone for it to be true.  “That’s what everyone thinks, but I’m not.  I miss – I miss her, miss what we had, but it’s the right thing.  Darcy’s young, and she has so many opportunities . . . ”

  _You’re young, and that’s a self-help pamphlet, not something anyone actually believes, ever,_ Natasha thinks, but says, “Are you keeping in touch?”

 “Yeah,” Steve answers, in a way that means _no._

“I can tell Tony you’re not feeling well,” Natasha offers, and he snorts – humor for the super-serum set, who are never not feeling well. 

 “I’m not out here because of Darcy,” Steve repeats, and swallows again, hard.  _Super-soldiers don’t cry,_ she thinks at him, and it’s almost maternal.  He swallows and swallows.

 “I know,” Natasha tells him.

 “He’s _old,_ ” Steve says, like the words are being ripped from his throat.  “I mean – not -”

 “I know what you mean,” Natasha says, not ungently, but adds, “Pepper too.  Darcy too, if she hadn’t stayed in Asgard.  Which is why you’re not heartbroken.” 

  _Coulson.  Clint,_ her mind adds, but they are her ghosts-in-waiting more than his. 

 Steve finally looks at her, sideways and down without moving his shoulders - looks at her like she’s just stabbed him, which she probably deserves – but like he’d tried to claim, it’s the right thing.  She’s a sharp blade, anyway, a scalpel, and this is surgery. 

“I’m going to lose them,” Steve confesses. 

 “Birthday parties suck,” Natasha agrees, and hopes he understands her casual bravado for the advice that it is.

 He laughs and slams his head back into the wall – not acceptance, maybe, but acknowledgement.

 “And I have a lover who’s aging as slowly as I am, and a daughter who will actually outlive me,” Natasha says – Natasha cuts, and squeezes, because it’s no good if you don’t get all the poison out.  “You don’t, and you want to know what you did wrong.  How you ended up here, just trying to do the right thing, while I’ve-”

 “Stop,” Steve says, and Natasha stops.

 There is silence. 

 Then, “Don’t talk about yourself that way.” 

 “Okay,” Natasha agrees.  “Alright.  I’ll give you that if you say it.” 

 “Christ,” he says, then winces, and the look on his face actually hurts – at least she never had that problem.  Faith.  Her world used to make sense, yes, but not in any way she’d ever want back. 

 “Tell me to leave you alone and I will,” she says.

 “It isn’t fair,” Steve blurts out, voice thick.  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way, and I didn’t ask for this, and it’s not fair.”  And he swallows and hangs his head and breathes like he’s mortal again.  Natasha puts a hand on the back of his neck, fingers running just up into his hair, down again as far as the collar of his shirt, cool where his skin is feverish. 

 “Shh,” she murmurs, as he braces his hands on his knees.  “Shh, I know.”

 He laughs bitterly, shakes his head.  “Who ever did this for you?” he demands. 

“No one,” Natasha agrees, “which is probably why you’re a better man without trying than I’m ever going to be.”

 “That’s not true, and you’re breaking your end of the deal.”  _Don’t talk about yourself that way._

“Okay,” she agrees, and lets her hand slide to his shoulder and just rest there while his head hangs lower, lower, until he’s sliding down the wall and resting his forehead on his knees.  Her fingers settle again, on the top of his head, like a blessing. 

  _I’ve never had your faith,_ she thinks.  _No one did this for me because I didn’t need it.  I had nothing to lose._

“I’ll be okay,” Steve says, proud and irritated at her motherliness even as his voice is thick and choked.  “It’s not like I don’t know about losing people.  It’s not like I haven’t survived it before.”

 “It’s worse when you can see it coming,” Natasha points out.

 “You’re really, really awful at being comforting,” he retorts, chuckling a little.

 “Who said I was trying to be comforting?” she asks. 

 He looks up at her.  “And you’re a lousy liar.”

 “Terrible,” she agrees, lips pulling up into a smile.  Then, “It doesn’t get easier.  But you’ll get better at it.”

 “What if I don’t?” he asks.  “What if I don’t _want_ to?”

 “Then you find a way not to,” she says, flat and without judgment.  “There are ways, even for us.  I’m the only one out of my program who didn’t find one.” 

 He blinks at her, at that, stares and stares and stares and lets it sink in, her hand still on his head, like benediction, like comfort, like a thousand other things she doesn’t have the faintest idea how to give, but she knows how to give this.  _There is always a choice._

“I – I don’t -”  he shakes his head and looks away.  “I don’t – no.  No.” 

 “Good,” she says.

 “I still believe -” and he stops like he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

 “Good,” she repeats.

 He shakes his head.  “Even if I’m lying to myself?”

 “Especially if you’re lying to yourself."  

"Why?"

"Because it still occurs to you to ask that question," Natasha says.

 

 


End file.
